


Paper Boy

by skivvysupreme



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-13 00:11:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9096631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skivvysupreme/pseuds/skivvysupreme
Summary: Kurt's favorite notebook doodle takes on a life of his own.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written from a one-word prompt ("cartoon") but ended up a little longer than the others, so I thought I'd post it as its own little fic.

Kurt doesn’t know where the boy comes from. Maybe he’s the Disney prince who was never promised to Kurt as a child. Maybe he’s the dapper, dancing man in all those musicals Kurt used to watch with his mother. Maybe Kurt’s looking into this too deeply and he’s just Kurt’s current, sharply-tailored, GQ fantasy, keeping him afloat in the Interesting Boy Desert that is Lima, Ohio. 

Whoever he is, when Kurt puts his pencil to the paper to draw him, the boy always looks the same. 

Kurt doodles him in the margins of his notebooks, his idle mind and fingers conjuring a dark-haired stunner with big, bright, almond-shaped eyes and a sweet smile that’s only for him. Visually, he’s everything Kurt isn’t: Kurt imagines he’s short, a little stocky maybe, with a thicker build than Kurt has. His hair, instead of reaching for the sky, lays flat against his head. The angles of Kurt’s elfin face are rounder, heavier on the doodle boy. Where Kurt’s nose slopes up, the boy’s goes down a little. He has heavier eyebrows and an intense stare, when Kurt draws him a serious expression. Kurt gently shades the boy’s skin with his softest pencil, giving him a darker complexion; he has no particular ethnicity in mind, but he doesn’t think this boy is white. 

The boy becomes Kurt’s paper friend in his most boring classes, only two-dimensional in the literal sense as Kurt learns more about him. That’s how it feels; Kurt may have invented the boy, but he’s quickly taking on a personality all his own for Kurt to get to know. He likes dark roast coffee without frills, though he sometimes indulges in a healthy dash of cinnamon. He likes sports and knows far more about them than Kurt does. He adores music, and when Kurt starts drawing winding piano keys along his page borders, he learns that that’s what the boy plays. He believes in soulmates, and he has a beautiful, idealistic heart. Kurt learns about the boy in snippets and impressions, but he does not know his name. Nothing he thinks of seems to fit.

Sometimes the boy is sad for reasons unknown to Kurt, looking off the sides of Kurt’s pages with a dark, pensive tilt to his features. Kurt wishes he could reach in and help him, but he can’t. Drawing him happier, when the boy’s mood doesn’t match, feels wrong, and Kurt finds himself worrying, drawing roses and pastries and music notes for the boy to try and cheer him up. It works, sometimes, and he smiles at Kurt the next time he draws him.

Despite the way he feels when Kurt opens his notebook, Kurt forcibly reminds himself that this boy isn’t real. He tries to, anyway. Kurt certainly wishes he were real, more than he’s wished for anything in his life. The boy has become so lively on paper that his absence in Kurt’s physical world is palpable. When Kurt closes his notebook, everything dims.

Then, one morning, the boy disappears. 

Kurt thinks, for a second, that he’s just grabbed the wrong notebook, somehow having thrown a fresh one into his messenger bag… but, no, his notes are still there. The notes are there, and the boy is gone. Kurt panics, tears springing to his eyes as he frantically flips through the pages, looking for him with a growing pit of dread in his stomach when the boy is nowhere to be found. This is impossible. He can’t have just peeled himself off the paper and walked away, right? Kurt couldn’t have imagined _imagining him_ , right?!

Kurt grabs a pencil and tries to put him back where he was, but his image won’t come. He can see the boy so clearly in his head, as he has with increasing clarity since he started drawing him, but when he puts his hand to the paper, nothing happens. Kurt misses his next class, going through every notebook and every bit of paper in his locker trying to find him. 

“Where are you? _Where are you?_ ”

By the end of the school day, Kurt’s trudging into Glee club with his heart in pieces, utterly devastated and unable to explain his misery to Mercedes because – well, it’s crazy. Kurt has lost his mind and fallen in love with someone who doesn’t exist, someone he invented, who has now vanished with no warning or explanation. Mercedes sits next to him in the back of the choir room, rubbing his shoulder to comfort him even though she doesn’t know why he needs it. 

Mr. Schue leaves his office and sits on his stool by the piano, clapping his hands to call the group to attention. “Hey guys, we have a new student who would like to audition for us today!”

Kurt, curled up in his chair with his legs pulled up and his cheek resting against his knee, looks towards Mr. Schue’s office door, then chokes on his next breath when he sees the person walking out of it. 

The boy. His paper boy, his imaginary man, in all his sweet, clean-cut, compact glory, stands there in the flesh, in the center of the room. His eyes, just as gorgeous as Kurt pictured them, immediately land on Kurt, and his soft, pink lips drop open in shock before his face lifts in a huge smile. “Oh. There you are.”

Kurt struggles for breath. What – what is this, _what is happening–?_

“Kurt, are you okay?” Mr. Schue asks, following the boy’s eyes to the back of the room, where Kurt has risen from his seat and stands in front of his chair with a hand on his chest. 

Kurt doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t know the answer, and instead climbs over chairs and pushes through his fellow Glee club members to get to the boy. He grabs his hand and pulls him out into the hallway without a word, Mr. Schue calling after him to no avail. 

They just stare at each other for a few moments once they’re in the hallway, the boy beaming at him and Kurt just shaking his head and laughing as he looks him up and down. 

“I woke up this morning on the football field,” the boy says, and Kurt is pleased to find that his voice is incredibly warm and rich, setting off butterflies in Kurt’s stomach. “I don’t know how I got there, but everything was round and spiky and warm and cold and I could _touch_  them for real. But I didn’t see you when I opened my eyes and it scared me. I had to find you.  _Kurt_.” He says Kurt’s name breathlessly, passionately, like it’s the only word he’s ever wanted to say. 

Kurt reaches for him, gasping in relief when his hands touch the boy’s solid form. “You’re real. I felt like you were, but – but it was impossible. I _thought_  it was impossible. But here you are, you’re _real_ , how are you real? How are you here right now?”

“You brought me to life,” the boy says, intertwining their fingers. His hands are strong and sure.

_“How?”_

“I don’t know, but… thank you, Kurt. The more I saw you, the more you drew me, the more I wanted to know about you, but I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t get to you, I couldn’t… _be with you_ , not from the flat world.” 

Kurt moves closer, squeezing the boy’s hands. “You wanted to be with me?”

“Present tense,” the boy corrects, grinning. “Of course, Kurt. What I learned from you, what you gave me… that’s how I got to know you. You speak French very well, but I’m better at math. You… cared for me, exactly as I was, when I was unhappy. You’re gorgeous, smart, compassionate. Why wouldn’t I want to be with you? Why wouldn’t anyone?”

“You’d be surprised,” snorts Kurt. “There were things I wanted to know about you, too, but they never came to me. I guess this is why. You were still becoming real.” 

“Well, I’ve always been real, to me.”

Kurt closes his eyes as the boy cups his cheek. “You’ve always been real to me, too. I just couldn’t let myself believe it. Not until I wanted you badly enough.” He opens his eyes at the strangled sound the boy makes in his throat, and finds the boy looking back at him with such overwhelming desire and affection that his hazel eyes seem to glow with amber. It’s a look Kurt could never have drawn, could never have captured. 

And then he lifts onto his toes and kisses Kurt. It’s soft and quick, even a little tentative at first, but it gets his point across, and when he pulls away, Kurt’s hand has found its way up to the boy’s chest. 

“What’s your name?” Kurt asks, blushing furiously as he clutches at the boy’s polo shirt. 

“My name is Blaine.” 

“Blaine… Hm. I would never have thought of that.”

Mr. Schue clears his throat from the doorway. “Uh, guys? Is everything okay? Are you still good to audition, Blaine?”

“Yes, sir,” Blaine answers, finally stepping back. He glances over his shoulder at Kurt one more time, taking him in with an awed look on his face before he smiles and reenters the choir room.

Mr. Schue holds the door open and lets Kurt through first, whispering, “You two know each other?” 

“We will,” Kurt says, biting his bottom lip as he skips back to his seat.


End file.
